wpsso

WPSSO Core v3.52.0 includes a new “Robots” option for search engines / SEO in the post edit Publish metabox (see the changelog here). Uncheck the “meta name robots” option under the SSO > Advanced > Head Tags List > SEO / Other tab to hide / exclude the “Robots” option from the Publish metabox (enabled by default if no SEO plugin is detected).

This new WPSSO Core version includes a new “Person” role for users – this role is added to all new users by default. You can uncheck the “Add Person Role for New Users” option under the SSO > Advanced > Integration tab to disable this automatic feature (enabled by default). The “Person” role will be used by WPSSO JSON for selects requiring a “Person” role for its Schema markup.

WPSSO Core v3.53.0 also includes fix for the image upscale feature – an incorrectly named variable prevented the proper calculation of the image upscale size.

Once in a while a WPSSO Core user will ask me how to disable notices from WPSSO for small images — they reason that images uploaded to their Media library are sized correctly beforehand, and they cannot re-upload larger images without significantly altering their content layout (including huge images, instead of smaller ones, in their post content). For example, if a user requires a 300x200px image for their content, they upload a 300x200px image to the Media library. What they don’t realize is that WordPress isn’t meant to be used this way and they’re breaking an essential WordPress feature by doing this — not to mention that WPSSO will probably reject the image for being too small for Facebook Open Graph meta tags and Google Schema markup requirements. :-)

WordPress and several 3rd party plugins provide different image sizes based on the resolution of the viewing device (aka responsive images). For example, a 300x200px image in your content will look blurry on high resolution screens (almost all current mobile phones, tablets, and laptops) because the browser must “upscale” the image to 450x300px or 600x400px in order to fill a 300x200px space on these high resolution screens. WordPress includes additional image markup in the webpage to provide alternative sizes (300x200px, 450x300px, and 600x400px for example), which allows the browser to choose the appropriate image based on the screen resolution. If you upload a 300x200px image to the Media library, WordPress will not be able to offer these additional image sizes, and WPSSO will not be able to use this image for most social sites and search engines (which have minimum image size requirements).

Because of this new JetPack feature, older versions of WPSSO Core (before version 3.48.7) may show a warning on Custom Post Type editing pages that the post shortlink is empty — which also prevents WPSSO Core from checking the current post webpage for duplicate meta tags. Additionally, the WordPress “Get Shortlink” button on post editing pages and the link rel="shortlink" HTML tag in webpage headers will be missing.

WPSSO Core version 3.48.7 now checks for empty values returned by the wp_get_shortlink() function and provides a correct shortlink URL. This not only addresses the new Jetpack feature, but also fixes incorrectly coded themes that disable the link rel="shortlink" HTML tag by returning an empty shortlink value (a violation of the WordPress theme guidelines).

If your site still uses the default WordPress transient cache in the database options table (most WordPress sites), you’ll find a new “Cache Status” metabox on the SSO > Plugin Dashboard and Features Status page.

If you’re using an external object cache, like APC, Memcache, Redis, Xcache, etc., this new metabox will not be displayed. Support for your chosen external object cache could be added at a later date, depending on user requests and the availability of an API to get (or count) all stored keys by prefix.

The NextGEN Facebook plugin was forked in 2014 and replaced by the WPSSO Core plugin — they’re both Free and available on WordPress.org, have the same author and developer, the same solid core features and code-base, but WPSSO Core is distributed without the social sharing buttons and their related features. Social sharing buttons are distributed separately, as optional extensions for WPSSO Core. WPSSO Core also provides several other useful and optional extensions:

WPSSO v3.40.3-1 plugin has been released (see the complete Changelog here) — this new version adds a custom “Product Condition” option in the Social Settings metabox, along with updating the minimum & recommended versions for WordPress and PHP.

The new “Product Condition” option will be visible only if the Open Graph og:type meta tag value is a “product” — which is the default value for all product pages from Easy Digital Downloads, MarketPress – WordPress eCommerce, WooCommerce, WP eCommerce, and most other e-commerce plugins (developers can also hook the ‘wpsso_og_type’ filter to change the default value – see the complete list of filters here).

WPSSO v3.40.0-1 has been released (see the complete Changelog here) — this new version adds custom Product Availability, Price and Currency options to the Social Settings metabox.

These options will be visible only if the Open Graph og:type meta tag value is a “product” — which is the default value for all product pages from Easy Digital Downloads, MarketPress – WordPress eCommerce, WooCommerce, WP eCommerce, and most other e-commerce plugins that use a “product” custom post type (developers can also hook the ‘wpsso_og_type’ filter to change the default value – see the complete list of filters here).